The invention relates to a method of operating a motor vehicle having a parking assistance system with a system controller which receives one or more items of information from other controllers or units when performing an assisted parking maneuver, as well as a motor vehicle having an internal combustion engine.
Modern cars are equipped with various assistance systems. A particularly popular assistance system is a parking assistance system, which supports or fully automatically performs the reverse parking maneuver. Such system is known, for example, from DE 10 2005 017 359 A1. The system disclosed therein performs a safety test of relevant system parameters, whereby the parking assistance is disabled as necessary, i.e. in the event of an error. According to DE 10 2010 020 202 A1, the parking assistance system is also disabled when an engine stall is detected. If the parking assistance system is active during an engine stall, it is automatically disabled, whereas when it is not yet active, its activation is automatically prevented. An engine stall may occur, for example, when the engine is choked off. Deactivation occurs for safety reasons and is necessary because controllers that supply information to the system controller of the parking assistance system, e.g. from other sensors or units, perform a reset in the event of an engine restart. It is then no longer guaranteed that any signals are transmitted at all, or that the transmitted signals are correct. If the signals or information, respectively, are not correct, then this could cause the parking maneuver to be performed incorrectly, thereby damaging the own or other vehicles. When the engine is stalled or stopped as a result of the deactivation and the inevitable termination of a previously initiated parking maneuver that is assisted by the system, the driver is thus in the event of a restart faced with the problem that for example after he has entered the parking space halfway, he must now continue to park without the assistance system.
The invention is therefore based on the problem to ensure availability of the parking assistance system, even when the engine dies during an ongoing parking maneuver, for whatever reason.